Anatomy and Cell Biology 4451F/G Lecture 19: Lecture-19-Prions

53 views4 pages

Document Summary

Prions diseases used to be called tse (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies). Can affect a diverse group of vertebrates: sheep, goats (scrapie); cats, lions, etc. (fse- feline spongiform encephalopathy); deer, elk (cwd- chronic wasting disease); minks (tme- transmissible mink encephalopathy). This disease can also affect cows called bse bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mat cow disease). There has been one case discovered in 2003 that led to a 9-billion-dollar loss to the canadian economy. So once this disease was discovered, no one wanted to buy beef anymore. Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (tse)- humans: there is no cure or effective treatment, leads to death within 1 year of onset, long period of incubation, difficult clinical diagnosis. There are some techniques that can be used to detect tse. Rate of 1. 5 case per million people per year (400 new cases in the us per year). However, it is believed that these numbers are higher than that.